New Study Reveals Companies Are Starting to Depend on Social Media

Sabrina is the editor in chief for TINYpulse news. She's dipped her toes into various works of writing — from retail copywriter to magazine editor. Her work's been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg BNA, and Tech.co.

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A study released January 7, 2015 by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has concluded that, far from being a nuisance to companies, social media is taking their place as valuable tools for recruiting. Where possible, SHRM compared 2015 data to 2011 and 2013 to reveal ongoing trends. Here’s some of what they learned about companies in 2015.

As a general statistic, 84% of companies surveyed said they currently use social media for recruiting. For 81% of the companies, this is just one way the find good employees, though 5% of the companies says they use social media as their primary means of recruitment.

The survey identified the three top reasons companies are interested in social media. For 81% of the companies, social media offers a valuable tool for passive recruiting. Building brand recognition is what draws 77% of companies to social media. And finally, 71% say they use social media to target employment candidates with specific skill sets. Apparently, many companies really are out there reading LinkedIn profiles and such to discover interesting potential employees.

Nearly a majority of companies believe they can learn relevant work- and life-experience details about prospective hires through social media, and 43% of the companies say they use it regularly for screening applicants. In fact, over a third (36%) of the companies have rejected applicants based on information gleaned from social media or online searches, with about the same percentage of companies allowing the applicants to defend themselves against problematic information found online.

The survey also found that two-thirds of the companies surveyed have optimized their recruiting portals to make them attractive to potential employees using smart phones.

Sabrina is the editor in chief for TINYpulse news. She's dipped her toes into various works of writing — from retail copywriter to magazine editor. Her work's been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg BNA, and Tech.co.